


Sunlight

by barrelrider



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: (But it's happy too I promise), Angst, F/M, Gen, M/M, Pretty much John can't catch a break, Sorry baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-27 15:43:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/663708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barrelrider/pseuds/barrelrider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary is the exact opposite of Sherlock.  She is the simple, soft sunshine; Sherlock was the loud, brash lightning. Both of them, in their time, wrapped around his life and covered him with security. John thinks, for a moment, about his life without the lightning of Sherlock Holmes, and he wonders if he could live without the safety of Mary Morstan’s sun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunlight

John meets his future wife at the grocery store on a Thursday afternoon, four months after Sherlock’s suicide.

She is ordinary-looking in the most extraordinary way. Her hair is strawberry blond; eyes a light hazel. She has a cluster of freckles spread across her button nose and glasses resting on the bridge. Her hair is up in a messy bun, and he judges by her outfit that she is a runner. She is looking at lima beans - John  _hates_  lima beans - and is humming softly to herself, a tune he just barely recognises as The Who’s “Baba O’Riley.”

John is ready to head to the check-out, but as he stops and watches her, he can’t help but stare. She is beautiful in a quiet and plain way, which makes her ordinariness something much grander than most would see. But, John is ordinary too. He is ordinary in a lost way: shadowed and tired and fading. She is ordinary like sunlight - simply there, present for all to see, but appreciated only by those who stop and see her.

He hates lima beans, but he walks over and grabs some anyway, just to talk to her.

John leaves Tesco with a can of lima beans and Mary Morstan’s number. 

-

They go to an Italian restaurant two weeks later. Their email correspondence becomes John’s favourite thing, his most anticipated moment of the day. There is no rush in their exchanges, and it is all about the little things - favourite colors, dogs vs. cats, jokes with poor punchlines (she laughs anyway), and more. John once feared the simplicity of it all would suffocate him, only adding to the painful stillness of his routine-based life. But, hers is a brilliant easiness, calm and soft. It’s almost enough to heal him.

Almost.

They exchange small talk over their meal, though the food quickly becomes a distant priority. Her smile is gentle, almost maternal. In her presence, he feels a sort of safety which he swears feels familiar. He can’t place it. She hones in on his pensiveness. He brushes it off. She remains unconvinced. It surprises John how good she is at reading him. Then again, there is not much left to read.

For one night, the mess of his life and emptiness of his soul is replaced by serenity. He knows she is having as good a time as he; the tickled pink of her cheeks tells him so. Still, he does not invite her back to the flat, and he is not invited to hers. They are both settled with it.

When he turns to leave, he feels a light touch on the cuff of his jacket. “I want to see you again,” she says softly.

He turns back around and kisses her cheek without thinking. “I’ll call you,” he says just as quietly.

And call her he does.

-

Three quiet months in, she asks to see his flat - a day he has dreaded.

He stares long and hard at the mess of 221b. There is little change from before the suicide. Sherlock’s things remain unmoved; only dusted when needed. John tells himself that Sherlock will appreciate his things being untouched, when he comes home.

John wonders when he will stop thinking that he will.

Half a year later and John still spends evenings just sitting in his chair, staring at its cousin in front of it, trying to picture Sherlock crouching on the cushion with his fingertips pressed against his lips. He does it at that moment as well, and closes his eyes with furrowed brows. He prays for the image in his mind to be reality when he opens his eyes.

His prayer is unanswered, as is the knock on the door. He hears Mary’s voice on the other side inquiring within, but does not have the heart to let her in, not while Sherlock’s ghost still lingers before him.

-

It takes another month and a half for him to let her in. She does not comment on the mess, but admires the flat’s coziness. She chuckles at the spraypaint smiley face on the wall and inquires about it. He hastily changes the subject. He puts on tea and he finds that she takes hers just as Sherlock did. He struggles to remain composed as he brings down two teacups.

When she asks about the skull on the mantle, he explains that it’s a friend of his. He does not hear his words as he speaks them, but realises what he says afterword. His knees go weak beneath him and he collapses to the floor in a brief moment of darkness. She catches him and asks what’s wrong. He cannot reply.

John trembles as Mary holds him close, and he can no longer hold his tears down.

He cries and she strokes his hair and whispers soothingly in his ear. She does not understand what causes him pain, but she knows that she must help heal him nevertheless.

He knows that he needs her.

-

The story of Sherlock Holmes comes to light. It takes time for John to explain it all, but she is patient. She holds his hands and sits in his chair. He sits across from her in Sherlock’s seat, a foreign sitting spot for him. He tells her nearly everything, but leaves out bits and pieces, like how much Sherlock truly meant to him and how he still texts an unresponsive number and still listens to an old and brief voice mail and still reads over a blog cataloging two hundred and forty types of tobacco ash. ( _Two hundred and forty_ three _, John._ ) But he tells her his story, and Sherlock’s, because he cannot tell one without the other. He emphasises his belief in the man; she does not question it.

There is a still moment after he talks of Sherlock’s funeral. She is quiet, then says she understands. He asks what she means. She says she understands what Sherlock meant to him. She brushes her soft fingers over his calloused ones. “It’s fine,” she says and offers him a smile. “It’s all fine.”

The three words crush him inside, but he does not burden her with that knowledge. He only nods and thanks her quietly. She pets his hands and makes an off-hand remark about the surprisingly cooperative weather. Great for running, John; you ought to join me sometime. He hardly hears her but studies her as she speaks. His sunshine. His security. His Mary.

Yes. He feels safe with her.

-

Their wedding is not as he expected it would be. He would have thought she would like to at least invite her family, but she is insistent on a small marriage in a courtroom. He later finds out that she has no relatives in England and feels sorry for inquiring. But she, as ever, is undaunted by sorrow, and smiles happily throughout the small ceremony, with three of Mary’s girl friends and Harry, Molly, Mrs. Hudson, and Greg in attendance.

There is a small after-party at 221b. John watches from the fireplace as everyone mingles. There is an emptiness in the room that he cannot deny. He glances at the mantel and sees the skull and knows exactly what the piercing feeling is, but knows there is no filling it, not even with how happy Mary makes him.

And she truly does. She is his safety net, a small ray of light in his otherwise stormy life. In a way, Mary is the exact opposite of Sherlock.  She is the simple, soft sunshine; Sherlock was the loud, brash lightning. Both of them, in their time, wrapped around his life and covered him with security. John thinks, for a moment, about his life without the lightning of Sherlock Holmes, and he wonders if he could live without the safety of Mary Morstan’s sun.

He shuts his eyes, dismayed that such sad thoughts plague him even on his wedding day. A warm hand in his brings him back to life, and he looks to see his wife’s contemplative gaze. He gives her a smile and a kiss, but she still stares at him pensively, head tilted to the side, innocence surrounding her. 

It takes a moment, but she gives his hand a squeeze and offers him her question. “Would he have liked me?” she inquires, a question he has often asked himself.

John glances to the skull again. He notices that at some point Mary has nestled Sherlock’s blue scarf gently around the object, as if wrapping it around Sherlock’s memory. He can almost see her prancing over to the man, poking fun at his cheekbones, and playing with the scarf on his neck. She would be laughing at his irritation. He would be glowering, but her impersonation of his deductions would amuse him, deep down. He would show it with an insult. She would laugh that laugh of hers. He would smirk that smirk of his. It would have all been fine. Almost.

“Yes,” he replies honestly, still watching the skull. “He would have.” And he means it.

-

John and Mary Watson marry a year and three months after Sherlock Holmes’ death.

They live together in 221b. Sherlock’s belongings remain in place, though Mary’s few possessions are squeezed in. Their life is as their courtship had been - about the little things. They watch telly, read by the fire, have tea with Mrs. Hudson, go for walks, and every small thing in-between. It is a quiet life for John, the antithesis of life with Sherlock, yet just as wholesome. John feels  _happy_  again.

Sherlock’s ghost comes and goes. John allows his memory in more frequently now. He no longer has to fear about being left alone to reminisce. And, if ever he needs to pull himself from the darkness, he tells his wife about his adventures with Sherlock. She laughs, and so does John. There are times when he even pictures Sherlock sitting with them as the butt of their jokes, mocking them both for being so boring and repetitive. John likes to think that Sherlock would be fighting a smile the whole while, though.

-

The Watsons live in a slow-paced, yet perfect routine for ten months.

Mary falls ill during the eleventh month.

John Watson becomes a widower two months later.

-

Mary’s undiscovered family history works against her. Her good health does not stand a chance against the cancer laced in her genes. She cannot hope to fight it as it eats at her slowly, hidden, for two years before her marriage, and even after. She does not understand why it has laid dormant for so long, why it chooses now to attack. She laments, for she knows what it will mean for John; what it will put him through again.

That is why she does not tell him. Her ailing health does not show itself for three weeks, and it is barely caught in glimpses of fatigue and instances of pain. When he hears her cry out, he is at her side in a heartbeat. She tells him not to fret and smiles weakly, knowing she cannot hide it for long. But she tries nonetheless, writing her waning state off as nothing serious. It will all be fine.

It is when she falls at the foot of the stairs and cannot get up that she knows it’s the end of her lie.

He is upset as he receives the news. He has to step out of the hospital room for a moment, leaving her guilty and remorseful as her silicone solution is replenished. It does not take John long to realise the error in his ways, the utter selfishness of his move, and loyal as he is he returns to her side. John apologises over and over and holds her as though she is made of porcelain. He strokes her brittle hair and feels her go limp in his arms, her forehead on his shoulder, her tears on his skin. He stands strong for her - the soldier through and through - as she cries. John has never seen her cry before.

He is glad her eyes are hidden against his collar bone, for he fails to stop silent tears from sliding down his cheeks.

-

Mary tries to stay at home, but grows too weak too quickly. She ends up needing to stay at the hospital, where the nurses can give her consistent and constant care that John cannot. He stays with her every day from 18:30 to 23:45 - from the moment he leaves surgery to the latest visitors can stay. There are nights when the nurses find them asleep together on the bed, hand-in-hand, and they allow them to stay that way. And in the morning after those nights, they see him kiss her forehead and whisper his affections to her, then he leaves in silence.

She reaches a point, one week before she is destined to die (though they do not know it), where she struggles to stay awake. She sleeps when John visits her; she sleeps when he leaves. If they are lucky, she wakes up and they talk, but more often when she wakes - if she wakes - they sit in comfortable and companionable, yet sad silence, or John reads to her, or they watch John's old Doctor Who DVDs and laugh at the antics of an ageless god in a universe where maybe, another Mary Morstan and another John Watson can live happily ever after.

There is a day where he brings the skull and the scarf, ignoring the weird looks of the hospital staff, and buys a single rose from the shoppe below. Mary wakes up to find the rose in the scarf-wrapped skull’s teeth with a note that reads  _‘John made me do it. SH’_ tapes to its cranium. It makes her laugh so hard that she cries, slightly from pain but mostly from the good humour John still brings her.

The last time she sees him, she holds his hand and closes her eyes. She nods off with a warm smile as he sings, albeit badly, “Baba O’Riley” softly in her ear, knowing full well that it is her favourite song.

-

Part of John knows it is the end. He returns home the night he sings the song and stares long and hard at the life they built and the life they are going to lose. He nearly punches the living room wall but settles for walloping the sofa mercilessly. He yells and kicks a chair and knocks over a few small things, animal and utterly _done_ , then collapses in a mess of exhaustion. He knows, somehow, that he will never see her awake again.

He spends the night staring at Sherlock’s chair, wishing the detective was there to hold him as he cries for his wife, just as she held him as he cried for his detective.

-

John is not the last person Mary sees.

She wakes up in the middle of a disruptive storm. She reads the clock; it is thirteen minutes past midnight. Her throat is parched. She shifts in her bed, but winces as pain flies through her. She goes lax on the sheets and sighs in defeat. Beside her is a bouquet of fresh flowers. John has been there, then. She wishes she had been awake to see him. She stares towards the ceiling with a slow breath, wishing she could see the stars through the surely-darkened clouds overhead. She fingers her wedding ring and wishes, so badly, that her husband was with her still.

A figure in the corner catches her attention. Lightning illuminates the being for a moment in time. She watches the person - a man - not in fear but in curiosity as he rises and approaches her. Her hazel eyes soon meet icy blue hues cast over sharp, angular features. He is handsome, a few years younger than she. He is poised and calm, hands in his long, black coat, looking as if he has been waiting for her. For a moment, she thinks he is Death.

More lightning. Her eyebrows raise as the flash lights the room again, and she catches the briefest glimpse of a blue scarf on his neck.

“Sherlock Holmes,” she says knowingly, softly, much like birdsong.

“Mary Watson,” the man replies knowingly, steadily, in deep baritone.

The chair is quietly scooted closer to the bed, and the man takes a seat once more. Mary cranes her neck to glimpse him over. From his new angle, she does not need the light of lightning to see his face - to see the remorse written in his eyes. Her visage is neutral, though confusion swirls in her mind and makes her head feel fuzzy and light. Or is that life escaping her?

“I don’t have long,” comes his voice from the slight shadow he sits in.

Mary wears a half smile. “Neither do I,” she chortles. There is fear in her voice. She hopes he does not pick up on it, but knows, just from John’s stories, that he does. “How are you here?” she asks, changing the subject. He is silent. She manages a wry, joking smile. “I won’t tell John,” she speaks, and wonders when she became so morbid.

The joke does the trick, though. Sherlock’s terse facade crumbles ever so slightly. “I can’t say,” he replies. “Not yet, anyway.” He looks out the window, and his dark hair sways as he moves. “There are still webs to burn.”

She shifts as his gaze locks back on her. IMary knows he is processing a mental minute-by-minute death sentence, and hopes he does not share. “Why are you here?” she asks softly with gently furrowing brows. “With me. You should be with John.”

The mere mention of her husband’s name makes something in Sherlock’s eyes change. His remorse grows; his eyes flicker to his bony hands in his lap. He remains silent. She answers for him. “Still webs to burn,” she repeats, though the true meaning and depth of the sentence is beyond her. She allows shared silence to seep between them. It is an odd comfort, knowing that she will die with the great Sherlock Holmes by her side. It is almost as though John is with her, though she cannot say why.

“I’m here,” he speaks, and she turns his way, “so you know that John won’t be left alone. Not again.”

She is quick to correct him. “I don’t have a choice in leaving him.” Her words are colder than she intends.

His response is hushed. “Neither did I.”

And it all comes out. He tells her everything, and she wonders why. She wonders why he elects to tell a dying woman the secret to his magic trick. She wonders how he can even do it. By John’s descriptions, she never imaged Sherlock as a man to confess much of anything to anyone. Mary is almost touched that he chooses her, and she listens well, nodding along silently as he tells her everything.

The rain pelts the window as the room falls quiet again at the tale's end. The light of the machines nearby sends a soft red and green glow in the air. Sherlock is watching the rain, and Mary is watching her slowing heartbeat. “I want to thank you,” she says after a moment. She feels his eyes on her but does not feel it necessary to return the glance. “For saving John’s life that day.” Her voice is quiet and emotional. For a moment, she cannot speak.

She finds it suiting to turn then, and smile sincerely at Sherlock. Three tears roll down her cheeks. Her voice is strained with emotions. “For making it so I could meet him. For letting me have the happiest two years of my life.” She holds up her left hand, and the golden band on her finger shimmers. Her hand drops back down, and she stares up at the ceiling with a look of total complacency. Death suddenly does not seem so frightening.

“You gave me my husband,” she concludes softly, “and I owe you so much for that.”

Mary expects that to be the end of their relationship, but is surprised to feel a cold grip on her right wrist. She turns to face him and eyes him through the dark. Something in his eyes shines. She wonders what it is, but knows it is raw and human and she is so very lucky to share it with him. “No,” he responds. His voice is hushed, deep and gravely, and she almost swears he is choked up. “You made John happy.” Sherlock’s hand twitches and slides to take hers. “You owe me nothing.”

Unlike in the past, there is no competition between flatmate and lover for John Watson’s heart. They were equally right for him, at their respective times in his life, and they both know it to be true. The gaze which passes between them as they hold each other’s hands is a passing of a shared torch; not the ownership of John’s heart, but the holding of it, a precious rite between two halves of one brilliant whole. 

Mary smiles softly against her pillow. “Don’t stay away too long, Sherlock.” Her voice is weak. “Make him happy again soon.”

Sherlock nods slowly, accepting the request. He would have done so without her asking. He would have spent the rest of his life making it up to John, if he had to. But he promises her nevertheless. “I will, Mary.”

Sherlock watches as her eyes close and she falls asleep. He stays for two more minutes, watching her heart monitor slow from 60 to 50 to 40 beats per minute, and he knows the time is soon. He gives her hand a squeeze, then relinquishes his hold. He stands, pops his collar in the darkness, and leaves without a trace.

When 03:00 passes, so does she.

-

John is empty once more. There is no sunshine or lightning; no softness or sharpness. No security. He is numb and spends his days staring at an empty chair and stroking a ring on his right hand. He is used to the loneliness, though, and has been heartbroken once before. He believes he can handle it just fine.

He is wrong.

Mary’s ghost dances around him in all things pure; Sherlock’s in the dangers and darkness. Both swing in tandem when he sits alone in the silence, and they both feel like daggers in his heart.

He hides the skull and the scarf, a blend of Mary and Sherlock, and tries to avoid touching anything which does not belong to him.

He eventually gets rid of Mary’s things. There is no homecoming for her. She is gone, snuffed out like a candle. By all rights, he should feel the same for Sherlock, but he cannot bring himself to believe it, even after three years. The hope that Sherlock will return is all he has, and no matter how foolish it makes him he will hold onto it as if his life depends on it, because he knows it does.

He does not feel entirely foolish for his dream, though. He spoke of it often to Mary. She was not like the others. She did not judge him, or tell him to move on. She would take his hand and say, “Yes, John, he’ll come home soon. Give him time.” John knows he is deluded and she was only making it worse. He almost spites her for it, but can never bring himself to do so.

He sits and thinks of such things on a Thursday afternoon. He knows he has shopping to do, but does not have the heart to stand and move from his chair. He rolls his ring in his palm. His eyes are closed as he faces Sherlock’s chair. He hears a knock at the door and opens his eyes. Empty leather. John puts his ring on, stands, and shuffles across the floor and down the stairs to the door.

He does not hear his phone vibrate from in his room. He does not see the text he has just received. He only sees the shockingly familiar silhouette of a tall man in the door, waiting to be let in. And as John rips the door open, the unseen message on his phone dims in the darkness.

_Sorry I’m late. SH_  

Outside, soft sunlight shines down on Sherlock and John.


End file.
